Rumiko Takahashi: Five Decades, Four Major Franchises, 200 Million Copies

Inuyasha is, for most international readers under 35, the entry point into Rumiko Takahashi’s catalog. It is also, structurally, the fourth of her four major long-running franchises — and the one that arrived after she had already spent two decades establishing the model for what a Weekly Shonen Sunday career could look like.

Takahashi was born in October 1957 in Niigata. She debuted in Weekly Shonen Sunday in 1978 with Urusei Yatsura, at age 21. As of 2026, she is still serializing — Mao began in 2019 in Weekly Shonen Sunday and continues. That is forty-eight consecutive years of professional serialization, across four franchises that have collectively sold over 200 million copies. By that measure she is among the highest-selling mangaka in the medium’s history.

This is what each of those franchises actually accomplished, and what the cumulative career tells us about a kind of mangaka practice that is increasingly rare.

Urusei Yatsura, 1978-1987

Urusei Yatsura ran in Weekly Shonen Sunday from 1978 to 1987, accumulating 34 volumes. It was Takahashi’s debut serial and remains, for a generation of Japanese readers, the foundational comedic-romance manga of the late Showa era.

The premise — an alien princess named Lum decides she is engaged to the unwilling Ataru Moroboshi, and the series follows the chaotic high school slapstick that results — was an unusual fit for Shonen Sunday. The series helped establish the magazine’s identity as the comedic-romance counterweight to Weekly Shonen Jump’s action serialization. The Studio Pierrot anime adaptation (1981-1986, 195 episodes, directed initially by Mamoru Oshii) became one of the defining anime productions of the 1980s. David Production’s 2022-2024 remake brought the franchise back to current audiences.

Maison Ikkoku, 1980-1987

While Urusei Yatsura was still running, Takahashi began Maison Ikkoku in Big Comic Spirits in 1980. This is the structural achievement that gets undervalued in international coverage of her career — she was running a shonen comedy and a seinen romance simultaneously, in different magazines, for seven years.

Maison Ikkoku is a 15-volume slow-burn romance between a college student and his apartment building’s young widowed manager. The series ran 1980-1987 and is widely considered one of the defining seinen romances of its era. The Studio Deen anime adaptation (1986-1988, 96 episodes) translated the manga’s restrained emotional register to television with unusual fidelity.

Ranma 1/2, 1987-1996

The week Urusei Yatsura ended, Ranma 1/2 began. It ran in Weekly Shonen Sunday from 1987 to 1996, accumulating 38 volumes. The premise — a martial arts heir cursed to transform into a girl when splashed with cold water — became one of the defining shonen comedies of the 1990s.

The anime adaptation was split across Studio Deen (the second series, 1989-1992) and earlier production work, totaling 161 television episodes plus films and OVAs. Ranma 1/2 was Takahashi’s first franchise to find significant international distribution — it was, for many North American and European fans in the 1990s, the first anime they actively followed.

A 2024 MAPPA-produced remake of Ranma 1/2 brought the series back to current streaming. The remake’s first season aired in late 2024.

Inuyasha, 1996-2008

Inuyasha began the week Ranma 1/2 ended. Takahashi has, for thirty years, never had a gap between major serials.

Inuyasha ran in Weekly Shonen Sunday from 1996 to 2008, accumulating 56 volumes. The premise — a modern high school student is pulled through a time portal into Sengoku-era Japan, where she meets a half-demon named Inuyasha and they assemble a fragmented sacred jewel — became Takahashi’s most internationally recognizable franchise.

The Sunrise anime adaptation ran in two segments: Inuyasha (2000-2004, 167 episodes), then Inuyasha: The Final Act (2009-2010, 26 episodes) to complete the story. Sunrise also produced four theatrical films and the sequel series Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon (2020-2022), centered on Inuyasha and Kagome’s daughter and her cousins.

For many international viewers, Inuyasha was the entry point to anime broadcast on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim and Toonami blocks in the early 2000s. The franchise’s combined manga sales exceed 50 million copies.

Mao, 2019-present

Takahashi began Mao in Weekly Shonen Sunday in May 2019, returning to the supernatural-historical register of Inuyasha. The series follows a modern high school student named Nanoka who is pulled into the Taisho era and entangled with a half-cat-demon named Mao. As of early 2026, the series continues serialization, with multiple volumes published.

What is structurally interesting about Mao is that Takahashi, at 67 when she started it, is still serializing weekly in the same magazine where she debuted at 21. Few mangaka careers have that kind of continuity.

Recognition and place in the canon

Takahashi received the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize Grand Prize in 2020, the highest formal recognition for a mangaka in Japan. She was inducted into the Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 2018 (the second mangaka to receive the honor, after Osamu Tezuka).

Her place in the manga canon is hard to overstate. She is one of the most commercially successful mangaka in history, with cumulative sales above 200 million volumes. She is the longest-tenured Weekly Shonen Sunday serial author in the magazine’s history. And she has continued to produce major work into her late 60s.

The Otakira encyclopedia covers Inuyasha, Ranma 1/2, Urusei Yatsura, and Maison Ikkoku across both their original and remake productions, with licensed availability tracked across MENA markets.

What the career tells us

The Takahashi career model — one author, one magazine, four major franchises across five decades — is structurally rare. Most modern mangaka careers either burn out after one major work (Eiichiro Oda is the exception, not the norm) or transition into supervisory roles after their second franchise.

Takahashi is one of the very few authors who has produced a sustained career as a serializing weekly mangaka into her seventh decade. That is the structural fact that her catalog represents, and it is worth registering as the medium increasingly trends toward shorter careers and earlier exits.